


No Memories But These

by returntosaturn



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 20:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18105539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: “You’re common, and poor. And you’ve lived the consequences of those more powerful than you. You’ve made a life with what you had. It was not a good one, but it was all you knew.”/Extended/rewritten scenes from the musical. One shots, non-linear story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first story for this category, and I'm not really nervous to post it, I just hope you guys like it because I really enjoyed wiring these.
> 
> I wanted to make a bigger story about the nurse, but it just didn't come together. I'm rubbish at writing lengthy things, and I just don't have the time to keep up with them, so I changed my mind and instead decided to just make this a series of one shots. Maybe more to come. Who knows.
> 
> I saw the tour just last week (fabulous btw), and I incorporated a few lines I could remember, but most of this dialogue is mine. Also totally made up the character of the nurse, just in case anybody is confused or thinks I've gone crazy.

Orange blossoms gleam clean and white, their scent thin in the morning air. The child—hardly a child anymore—waits at a little table set on the balcony, a borrowed shawl tucked around her shoulders, watching the branches sway.

When she sets down the tray without a sound, the child turns to smile at her. 

“Its early for orange blossoms,” she says before taking her seat and pouring for them. 

“What a pretty surprise,” the child answers dreamily and burrows deeper into the knit blue. She goes back to her reverie, and Markoff allows it for a few moments before deciding to press on to business.

“You’ll leave tomorrow,” she says abruptly, but prepares Anya’s tea for her, just the way she likes it, with lemon instead of sugar.

The girl is quiet, but her attention isn’t on the tree anymore. Markoff looks up at her just briefly before passing over her cup and saucer. “Be careful,” she can’t help but remind her, though she’s not a trembling frail thing anymore.

When her hair had been cut short and blunt, when bandages were still wound about her ears, Markoff had plucked a hat from the donations, far too worn and far too drab against the girl’s honey blonde hair. She can still remember the dress they’d found her in—dyed in blood and earth, its original white stained to disrepair. She remembers her slight weight in her arms, how the girl’s head rested against her bosom, a red and angry wound scrawled across her temple under bare trees and grey sky.

She is not a different girl, not yet. She is still fragile and soft, but she’s ready. She’ll learn. Markoff must remind herself...

“There is a canning factory in Nizhny. If you can make it there within the week, there’s a job for you there.”

Anya remains silent. Of course she cannot stay here forever, and of course she’d known that ever since she was released from the trappings of her bandages—since she could properly recite her alphabet and name the correct day of the week—that the time she spent here was a gift and not a right. She earned her place, mopping the halls and pushing the laundry carts. But this was not a sanctuary, not even a home. Not where Anya belonged.

“I’ll be alone,” Anya says resignedly, bringing Markoff back to the present.

She can’t help but notice the girl’s perfect posture, even though she’s yet to take a sip, staring down into the steaming black like its a looking glass.

Markoff sets her teacup on its saucer deliberately and sits back in her chair, shoulders square. She touches the little silk pouch through her pocket, and feels her throat go tight.

There are whispers of soldiers marching the streets of Moscow. Manor houses being burned. Labor camps to drain out anyone who poses a challenge. 

She clutches at the little pouch, holding it for just a moment, just to let the decision solidify itself before she pulls it free.

“I have something to give you,” she says, and reaches across to take the child’s hand. 

She places the pouch there, and folds the child’s fingers closed around it. 

“You came to us half dead,” she reminds her. “Not a thread of a thought about who you were.” 

She holds her gaze until, with quiet curiosity, the child brings her fist to her lap, and beneath the table Markoff cannot see the flash of the stone until the sun sends a glint of it across the girl’s cheek.

“Where did you get this?” Anya gasps, eyes wide and clear blue.

“I found it sewn into the underclothes you wore when you arrived.” She presses her palms into the table, takes a deep breath. “It is very important that you keep it safe. Do not lose it. Do not show a soul until the moment you must.”

“But I don’t understand…”

Markoff lifts a hand. “Quiet. Put it into your pocket. Do not touch it, do not even look at it. Not until you know it is time for you to use it.”

Anya’s face betrays the fact that she desperately wants to ask more, but she obeys and says nothing else. She shifts to shove the secret away into the pocket of her skirt.

In the morning, she watches through the window as Anya steps through the gate, a hand-me-down scarf around her neck and a satchel over her shoulder.

The room is empty, bed stripped and wardrobe emptied. It is as if the girl was a ghost already.

Now, there is nothing for Markoff to keep quiet except her hope.


	2. Chapter 2

“She wouldn’t even look at me.” Tears glimmer in her eyes even as her chin stays high, given away by the glow of the chandelier that hangs above their heads.

Dimitry can only stare, quietly bewildered. 

“‘ _ She wants money and to break an old woman’s heart to get it _ ,’” she recites. He watches her slender fingers under her long white opera gloves curl into fists at her sides.

Of course he had anticipated this happening, but it is not the end of the road.

“I’ll tell her the truth,” he says, stepping forward, but she moves to block his way.

“That I was a pawn in this scheme of yours?”

He stops. He discovers, in the small proximity between them, that she is not so small and fragile as she’d always appeared. There is no trace of that girl here.

In another version of this story, he would’ve shouted, fought back, deflected. It had always been his way. But this is not a game anymore. Regardless of who she was, of her lineage, of how many hot meals and warm baths he would have if this all had gone according to plan. Regardless of what happened to their Russia now...

His voice sounds far too small, far too soft when he speaks again. “That you’re really…”

Her earrings flash when she shakes her head. 

“Stop. Please stop it. You’ll take advantage of us both to get your money. You put these ideas into my head, and I started to  _ believe  _ they were true.”

Tears brim on her painted lashes, like diamonds in the Petersburg sunset, and he grips her arm to steel them both.

“No. No, you don’t understand, you  _ are _ …”

“I’m tired of not understanding.” Her voice quivers behind stone features, the sound of a snowy landslip. She jerks out of his grasp. “And being told what it is I should understand, when and by who.”

She stays only a beat longer, to fix him with a look that makes him think she’d spit if it would’ve been in her character, before she disappears down the stairs in a flash of blue.

He spins back to face the curtained entrance to the loge, hands in his hair. Before him, silhouetted in the lamplight, more formidable than he would’ve thought, the Dowager Empress stands cloaked in her dark furs and jewels, scowling down upon him.


	3. Chapter 3

She finds him. Of course she does. Finds him on a conveniently empty train station platform just after he’s purchased a one way ticket. 

She wears the little matching white suit they bought when they first arrived in Paris, a beacon on the dusty pavement. 

“I don’t think I owe you an apology,” she says outright.

Dimitry smirks out over the platform, reaches to scratch at his ear. “Fair enough.”

“But…” Her voice softens. “I _ do _ think there were many misunderstandings.”

When he looks to her, her fingers are knit together meekly in front of her, her chin tucked.

“Where are you going?” she asks, straightening her shoulders and trying to look a little braver.

“Italy. At least that’s where this ticket will take me.” He waves it lazily. 

“Will you get a flat there?”

He chuckles. “Me? A flat? It’s hard to imagine me…”

When he looks up, she’s reaching to push back a curl that has blown loose from her pins, simply and unmistakably Anya.

“I’ve loved seeing Paris,” she says wistfully, with the small, hopeful smile he’s come to recognize. “But it would be lovely to make a home with someone. For a little while. And go from there.”

She blinks up at him, timid and questioning.

He watches, if only because this will be the last time.

“I’m not your prince, Anya,” he sighs, jerking his gaze away from her.

“You’re so stubborn!” she exclaims, stamping a foot even. He tries not to smirk. “Almost as stubborn as me.”

He expects her to go on, but silence stretches between them instead. 

“No,” she says after a moment. “You’re not a prince.”

He does not flinch at this. Not even if it does sting the tiniest bit to hear her say it.

“You’re common, and poor. And you’ve lived the consequences of those more powerful than you. You’ve made a life with what you had. It was not a good one, but it was all you knew.”

He squints up at her through the gray of the afternoon cast, drawn in on herself again, as if she were trying to piece together a great mystery hidden away inside her.

When she opens her eyes, she stares straight through him as she always seems to do. She shoves her way beside him on the little bench. He doesn’t even have time to shift his battered suitcase from his lap before she’s touching a hand to his.

“But you are good,” she says, and smiles. “You’re not a prince. Not to anyone else. But the Grand Duchess Anastasia would beg to disagree, Dima.”

He’s hardly processed her words before her lips are on his, sweet and soft and something in him unravels at the thought of actually, finally having her this close, this completely.

He leans into her, holding her there just to be sure she’s real.

She smiles against his lips and breaks the kiss, only to say, “I suppose I’ll need a ticket, then.”

He laughs and can’t help but kiss her once more.


End file.
